Extreme physics and the ends of the earth

By Dan Falk

WHEN science was young, the experiments were simple and the breakthroughs came easily – or so it seems in hindsight. Think of Galileo rolling a ball down an inclined plane, or aiming a simple tube, with a lens at each end, at the night sky. Or picture Michael Faraday discovering electromagnetic induction just by tinkering with a battery, an iron ring and some coils of wire.

Times have changed, and these days it takes a lot more work to shift a paradigm. For one thing, ground-breaking discoveries in physics are now typically made by teams rather than individuals. …

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